About vintage rings
A vintage ring was made to be worn, usually by hand, and it carries the marks of the workshop that made it. Rings are the most personal thing we sell and the hardest to buy from a distance, which is why every ring page carries a full dossier: metal and standard, stone weights where they are recorded, hallmarks, condition, earlier repairs and the work our goldsmiths carried out. Anything we cannot establish is left blank rather than filled in.
How we authenticate vintage rings
A ring passes three hands before it is listed. Our estate buyer records where it came from. Our goldsmith opens up the setting, checks the shank, the claws and any earlier repair, and tests the metal. Our gemologist looks at the stones under magnification, judges the cut against the period the ring appears to come from, and identifies treatments and replacements. Where Dutch law requires it, the metal is hallmarked by a recognized Dutch assay office.
Vintage versus antique rings
In the trade, antique means roughly a hundred years old or more, so Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and early Art Deco work. Vintage covers the decades after that, and estate simply means previously owned, whatever its age. We use these words as defined, and our own newly made Atelier pieces are never described with any of them.
Popular eras
Georgian rings are hand-cut and rare. Victorian rings run from mourning jewelry to gypsy-set gemstones. Edwardian work is platinum, pierced and light. Art Deco is geometric and calibre-cut. Retro and mid-century rings are heavier gold with bold color. Each era filter on this page draws on the era recorded for the piece, not on how the ring looks to us.
Diamond cuts you will meet
Old mine, old European, rose and transitional cuts were cut by hand for candlelight and early electric light. They return broad, soft flashes rather than the fine sparkle of a modern brilliant, and they are usually a little less regular. A period cut is a mark of age, not a defect, and we never recut a stone to make it look modern.
Sizing and resizing
Every ring shows its size in US, EU and UK. Where a ring can be resized safely we do it free of charge in our own atelier before it ships, and the product page says how far it can go. Full eternity bands, hallmarked shanks, carved or engraved work and some antique settings cannot be resized without harming the ring, and we say so plainly.